How do you get back up when too many things in life hit you all at once? How do you get your momentum back when it feels like every step is like wading through molasses? Today I want to talk about how Stoicism and friendship can find your balance and get moving again when life knocks you off your feet.
Act One: The Problem
“When you have been compelled by circumstances to be disturbed in a manner, quickly return to yourself and do not continue out of tune longer than the compulsion lasts.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations VI.11
Twenty-one years ago, I rode my first century — a hundred miles on a bike. I was relatively new to cycling, eager, and made the classic beginner mistake: I tried to keep up with riders who were far more experienced than me. I burned hard from the start, gave everything on every stretch, and by the time I crossed that finish line I was in so much pain I could barely walk. I had a stick shift car waiting for me in the parking lot and genuinely wasn't sure I'd be able to drive home.
There was a masseuse at the end of the ride. Twenty dollars for twenty minutes and I was able to walk again. Best money I ever spent.
A few weeks later I was riding with my cycling club and mentioned it to another rider. He smiled and gave me some advice that changed the way I ride forever. He told me to spin faster and lighter in lower gears at 110 to 120 RPM on flat roads. He explained spinning at that cadence engages your slow twitch muscles, the ones built for endurance. It saves your power for the hills and the sprints, where the fast twitch muscles earn their keep. The point wasn't to ride easier. It was to ride smarter — to pace yourself so you always have something in reserve when the terrain actually demands it.
I thought I'd learned that lesson. Last week reminded me I haven't fully applied it to my life.
In the span of a single week, everything seemed to arrive at once. Professional deadlines. A family situation that needed my full attention. Insomnia. Some hard conversations. And underneath all of it, that low hum of existential weight that a lot of us are carrying right now just from watching the state of the world.
I was treating all of it like a hill. Maximum power, all the time, on every front. And I hit a wall.
If you've ever felt that — not just tired, but the specific kind of exhausted where even small actions feel like moving through quicksand — this episode is for you. Because what I learned last week, with a little help, is that getting back to solid ground isn't about finding new tools. It's about remembering how to use the ones you already have.
"Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul." — Marcus Aurelius
That retreat was unavailable to me. Not because it didn't exist — but because I'd exhausted myself to the point where I couldn't find the door.
Now sometimes I get interesting comments about me opening up and sharing the things I struggle with. I think the fact that I’m vulnerable makes some people uncomfortable. But Stoicism is not about having all the answer or having a perfect life. Just because you study and try to live these principles doesn’t mean that you won’t have struggles and that you won’t fail.
Just because your struggling doesn’t meant mean you’re doing it wrong. Life is messy and things will never go perfectly. That’s the point. Stoicism gives you the tools to recover and get back on your feet when things don’t work out. It teaches you how to learn from those failures so that you can do better next time. In my case, it helped me to reframe things, and bring more balance back in my life.
Act Two: The Philosophy
Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations during one of the most relentless stretches of his life — plague, war, personal loss, the slow grinding weight of governing an empire that never stopped demanding things from him. And yet what you find in those pages isn't a man running at maximum intensity on every front. You find someone returning, again and again, to a single discipline.
He wrote:
“It is necessary to remember that the attention given to everything has its proper value and proportion. For you will not be dissatisfied if you apply yourself to smaller matters no further than is fit.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV.32
That's pacing. That’s economy of effort — meeting this moment with exactly what it requires, no more, no less. Not the accumulated weight of everything at once. You stop burning on the flats. You stop spending fast-twitch energy on terrain that only needs a steady spin.
This is Stoic temperance. It’s finding the appropriate balance between too much and too little, so that you don’t burn out, but keep making progress. It’s spending effort in proportion to the task at hand. It’s about rest and rejuvenation.
And sometimes it’s about getting rid of things that aren’t important or don’t serve you.
Dichotomy of Control
One of the core pillars of Stoicism is built around a deceptively simple question: what is actually within my control right now? Not the economy or geopolitics. Not how other people feel or what they say or how they say it. Those are outside your lane — they're the flat stretches where spinning efficiently is the right move. Burning maximum power there doesn't make you stronger. It just leaves you wrecked by the time you hit a hill that actually matters.
“You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
When we spend energy on those things we can’t control, we’re pushing up hills that don’t need to be climbed. We’re wasting energy on things we should just cruise past and leave alone.
And by the time we get to the things that need our full attention, we’re spent.
This is what Epictetus called the dichotomy of control — and most of us know it intellectually. We can recite it:
“There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power.” — Epictetus
But knowing it and being able to access it when you're depleted and emotionally flooded are two very different things. When everything hits at once, the principle doesn't disappear. But the fog of burnout can make it completely invisible.
The importance of Friends
Which brings me to something the Stoics understood that often gets overlooked in how we talk about this philosophy today. Stoicism is not a solo practice. Seneca wrote letters to his friend Lucilius for years — not because Lucilius was a student, but because the act of articulating your thinking to a trusted person clarifies it. Marcus had his teachers. Epictetus had his community. They understood that we cannot always be our own clearest thinkers, especially when we're in the middle of the storm.
Sometimes the most Stoic thing you can do is call a friend who will help you see your own thinking more clearly — and have the humility to actually listen.
Act Three: The Practice
"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are." — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
So how did I actually get out this and get things back to level?
I wish I could tell you there was one dramatic moment of clarity. There wasn't. It was a constellation of small things that slowly cleared the fog.
The first was a conversation with a trusted friend. Someone who knows me well enough to be honest with me. As we talked through what I was carrying, he started reflecting things back to me — reframes that shifted how I was seeing my situation. And somewhere in the middle of that conversation he mentioned something important. He was teaching me my own material. Things he’d learned through this podcast. The tools were never gone. I just couldn't see them from inside the fog.
This is why Seneca reminds us:
“Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.” — Seneca
Here's what he helped me see.
Some of the interactions that had felt like attacks were actually people being vulnerable with me. They were sharing how they felt because they care — because I matter to them. When you're depleted and emotionally flooded, vulnerability coming your way can feel like criticism. Your nervous system reads it as threat and goes straight into fight, flight, or freeze. The reframe wasn't to dismiss my reaction. It was to look at what was actually being communicated underneath it — to see things for what they are.
A lot of what I was burning energy on was completely outside my control. The economy. Geopolitics. The general state of the world. I knew this — I teach this — and yet there I was, treating these things like hills that required my full power. Awareness of the dichotomy of control isn't enough when you're in the middle of the spiral. Sometimes you need someone outside the fog to shine a light and point you back to what you already know.
The hopelessness I was feeling about my work not moving forward fast enough was rooted in wishing things were different than they are. Marcus Aurelius called this one of the primary sources of suffering — the gap between reality and our expectations of it. My situation wasn't hopeless. But I was measuring it against an imaginary version of where I thought I should be by now.
And like a good Stoic, he encouraged me to not worry about trying to work on all the things I needed to, but to find a few small actions I could take. When we feel hopeless, we feel like we’re not in control. Taking action, even small choices we have control over, is how we start the momentum going again.
And finally — and this one landed quietly but hard — he reminded me that I actually have a substantial body of work. A podcast with real traction. A course. A book in progress. The spiral had made it feel like I was starting from zero. I wasn't. I just needed to figure out what comes next, not restart from scratch.
But the conversation was only part of it. I also got some decent sleep. I went for a walk. I had dinner with my daughter. Unglamorous, simple, human things. And they mattered just as much as the philosophical reframes.
This is the part that grind culture gets completely wrong. Rest isn't the opposite of progress. Sometimes it's the only path back to it. Rest and recovery need to be a part of our discipline, not just the things that we want to accomplish. As Seneca reminds us:
“We must indulge the mind and from time to time allow it the leisure which is its food and strength. We must go for walks out of doors, so that the mind can be strengthened by a clear sky and plenty of fresh air.” — Seneca
It also means letting go of trying to control everything and feeling that frustration things won’t bend to your will.
"Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life." — Epictetus
Finding the right pace means that your effort and speed are appropriate for the terrain. It means slowing down to catch your breathe from time to time, and taking some time to enjoy the scenery rather than just trying to grind to the finish.
Act Four: Conclusion
So let’s go back to that quote from Marcus Aurelius:
“It is necessary to remember that the attention given to everything has its proper value and proportion. For you will not be dissatisfied if you apply yourself to smaller matters no further than is fit.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV.32
The lesson from that first century ride wasn't that I was weak. It was that I hadn't yet learned to distinguish between how to ride the flats and how to ride the hills. It took some wisdom and temperance to figure out how to pace myself.
And just like that lesson on the bike, it takes wisdom and often the input of a good friend to help you find your pace in life. To remind you what deserves everything you have, and what just needs you to keep moving steadily through it. Between the things worth your full power and the things that will drain you if you treat them that way.
Because strength is not constant intensity. Strength is knowing where to direct what you have. When everything hits at once — and it will — the goal isn't to match the chaos with equal and opposite force. The goal is to get back to level. To find a sustainable pace so you can spin efficiently through the flats and have something left when the hills arrive.
That might mean calling someone who can help you see your own thinking more clearly. It might mean sleep. A walk. Dinner with someone you love. It might mean letting someone reflect your own wisdom back to you and having the humility to receive it.
You already have the tools. Sometimes you just need to clear the fog enough to find them again.
Thanks for listening to the Stoic Coffee Break. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need it today. And whatever hills you're facing this week — I hope you find your cadence.
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